Developing applications that make effective use of machine-readable knowledge sources as promised by the Semantic Web vision is attracting much of current research interest; this vision is also affecting important trends in computer science such as grid-based and ubiquitous computing. In this paper, we formally define a version of the BDI agent-oriented programming language AgentSpeak based on description logic rather than predicate logic. In this approach, the belief base of an agent contains the definition of complex concepts, besides specific factual knowledge. We illustrate the approach using examples based on the well-known smart meeting-room scenario. The advantages of combining AgentSpeak with description logics are: (i) queries to the belief base are more expressive as their results do not rely only on explicit knowledge but can be inferred from the ontology; (ii) the notion of belief update is refined given that (ontological) consistency of a belief addition can be checked; (iii) retrieving a plan for handling an event is more flexible as it is not based solely on unification but on the subsumption relation between concepts; and (iv) agents may share knowledge by using ontology languages such as OWL. Extending agent programming languages with description logics can have a significant impact on the development of multi-agent systems for the semantic web.
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